Most Recent Post – Page 22 – Alana's Dharma Blog

What Kind of A****** Throws a Sponge on the Ground in this Beautiful Unspoiled Forest

November 18, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

It was the 2013 KPY retreat and LP Nut was leading some students through the forest on a hike/contemplation exercise. Suddenly we came to a nice open patch, just in front of a Kulti (a small hut), and there on the ground was a sponge. The piece of trash was such a stark contrast to the beautiful pristine forest and immediately, in my mind, I hear my most judgy voice saying, “What kind of an A****** would throw a sponge…

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Whooa Wait a Sec. It’s ME, You Mean it’s Really ME, it’s Been ME This Whole Time?!?!

November 11, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

This next section marks an important shift in my practice and my perspective as I began to zoom-in on the role I play in creating my own suffering. Sure, before this I had an intellectual understanding that I had wrong views, that I was the source of those views. That is, after all, the only rational explanation for all the problems I had managed to solve. Nonetheless, I sorta viewed myself as a victim in my own stories and struggles….

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Screw, This Dharma Thing

November 4, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

Screw, This Dharma Thing It was the 2013 KPY retreat and Mae Yo gave each of her students an everyday object and told us to go out and contemplate it. I eagerly waited in line to receive my object and when I got to the front and opened my hand, Mae Yo gave me a screw. Honestly I was none too pleased with that screw from the get go. Other folks were getting much cooler objects. The person in front…

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Is a Warm, Spot in the Shade so Much to Ask For?

October 28, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

I was doing a walking meditation, contemplating the inevitability of aging. I thought a little about my body, my life, my family…thought about old pictures and how different everyone looks. Thought about clothes and sizes … Still nothing was really penetrating, I was just going through the motions. I kept pacing, pacing, pacing, and suddenly I became aware of my path. Originally, I had been walking a circle that had a little bit of sun and a little bit of…

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Amazon oh Amazon Bring me My Box, I Hit the Button So I Must Be the Cause

October 21, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

I’m preparing for the 2013 retreat and I get a brilliant idea — solar powered shower. See, back in 2012 I had to take a few cold showers and I was none too pleased. So, I decided this year I would be prepared; I would bring one of those camping showers that had solar panels to heat the water. No more cold showers for me!! I did all my research, read reviews, picked-out the best product. Then, with weeks of…

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Bag Lady Alana

October 14, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

Panhandlers have always annoyed me. I feel so uncomfortable when I’m asked for money on the street…I feel so torn, put on the spot, so UGHHH. On one hand, I don’t want to be a ‘bad’ Alana and say no. On the other hand, my Inside Voice is screaming… “what did you do to deserve my money?” (give or take a few vulgarities…that voice in my head has a potty mouth). One day, I’m on the street carrying a…

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I Was Run Down by a Rhino and I Lived to Tell the Tale

October 7, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

So yes, seriously, I did in fact get run down by a black rhinoceros when I was on safari in Kenya. Lets just say that some big learnings followed that encounter. Here I will share the entry from my notebook just after the incident (because, of course, I brought notebook on safari just in case I had a dharma moment). Note, this is another example that closely follows the 5 Question Method outlined in Method to Undo the Madness :…

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The Buddhist Who Loves Bacon

September 30, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

I love bacon –seriously, I do a little celebration dance in the kitchen whenever my husband cooks it. I wrote a little song too: Bacon bacon such a treat, something super delicious to eat…But, it wasn’t always this way, in fact I was a moral vegetarian for more than 20 years. Squiggly line zoom-out… I was about 10 years old, my family was driving around Miami on a Saturday evening and, out of the blue, we saw a pig jump…

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Ubaitam in the Ocean

September 23, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

I was in Mendicino, a charming seaside town in Northern Cali, and I’m staring out the window of a coffee shop, watching the ocean, impatiently waiting for Eric to get his latte. At first I was mesmerized by the crashing waves, the churning near the rocks, it was so so beautiful. Then suddenly I thought, from here, from this perspective, this viewpoint, it’s all beauty no pain. I don’t notice, don’t think about…the rocks are so sharp, so dangerous, the…

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Incompetent Employees and the Voices in My Head

September 16, 2016 alana Comments 2 comments

I had this employee, let’s call him Glen, who just couldn’t get it together and stop making mistakes. I tried everything — I taught him, nurtured him, scolded him, guilted him, spelled-out the consequences of his mistakes, warned him — but still, every assignment he turned in was filled with errors . I WAS FRUSTRATED BEYOND BELIEF. Glen was a smart guy, he seemed pretty normal, with the skills of other opposable thumbed creatures, so how, HOW, was it possible…

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To-may-toe, To-mah-toe, Po-tay-toe, Po-tah-toe, Alana, Sandy

September 9, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

Again, I have chosen a story that utilizes a method that I have found particularly helpful in my practice. The method, which was taught at the 2012 KPY retreat, basically takes 2 objects and compares them as follows: A is Better than B B is Better than A A and B are essentially the same A and B are so different from each other they are not worth comparing Back in the day, I liked this method as a quick…

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Stop Being Such a Mooch

September 2, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

I had these friends, we’ll call them, Blake and Sandy, who were always mooching off my husband and I. When we went to dinner, the grocery, the farmers market, the movies, these two would just stand on the side while my hubs and I pulled-out our wallets. I figured, for sure, when they hung out with other friends, it couldn’t be like that. So why were we always expected to pick-up the tab? The situation really tore me-up, I worried…

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The Problem Statement

August 26, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

So I will start by admitting that this short entry is less of a story or a contemplation and more of a moment — a brief flash of awareness. It must have been mid 2012. I was at the farmers market with some friends and the day was beautiful, perfect even. I was standing, with a delicious coffee in hand, looking out at a sparkling blue ocean and it hit me. The problem statement. My problem: I don’t really believe…

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Watching Plants Grow May Not Be as Boring as it Sounds

August 19, 2016 alana Comments 2 comments

I would like to preface this blog by telling you upfront, you have heard it all before. It is on a theme you may have noticed already — Ideal/ Good Alana versus Normal/Bad Alana. You can see it in the prelude to this blog (Super Buddhist versus Everyday Alana), in the Homeless Alana story, In the Compassionate Alana story, spoiler alert : in an upcoming blog about mooching friends and in the last blog of this section about fearing my practice…

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Compassionate Alana — Like a Better Dressed Mother Teresa

August 12, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

I show-up at the Wat one day and LP Anan tells me that he and Mae Yo were talking about me the night before (uh-oh). They noticed that I have a problem (double uh-oh), my driving need to be compassionate (wha wha what how can this be a problem? Snap triple uh-oh), and I should go and solve it (easy as pie right?). So, in sum, my assignment was to notice the way that being a ‘compassionate’ person feeds into…

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Tree Pose and a Decision Tree

August 5, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

Impermanence is the meat and potatoes of my practice. Though over the years my thinking (and this blog, which will soon follow that thinking) evolved to consider many more Dharma topics (self and self belonging, suffering, aggregates, karma, etc.), I always come ‘home’ to impermanence. It’s my staple food for thought. It is my constant companion. It is the Dharma, my great refuge. So here I want to offer you, Dear Reader, one more simple tool that I consider a…

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Wanna Play a Game? Its Called Gathering Evidence

July 29, 2016 alana Comments 2 comments

It was one of my early retreats, 2012 perhaps, and Mae Yo started playing a game some of you ‘old timers’ might know: How are those birds related? The set-up is simple; imagine you look up and see 2 birds flying in the sky. Explain how they are related. I heard this and I thought, “this is sorta idiotic”. I mean who cares how the birds are related? Sure, sure I know the punch-line before we even start the game…

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The Matrix — Method Not Movie

July 22, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

Another Prelude to Introduce A Super Duper Important Buddhist Concept — Two-Sidedness: This next 2 section will have lots of entries on two sidedness so this seems as good a time as any to offer an introduction to one of the most fundamental ideas in Buddhism — Everything, everything, EVERYTHING, has 2 sides. 2 sidedness is a feature of impermanence. What exactly does that mean? Actually, it means lost of things. A few simple ones: The things that we enjoy…

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Odds and Ends, Tools and Techniques, Impermanence and Suffering

July 22, 2016 alana Comments 0 Comment

In this next section I’ll share a few more stories from the “early days”(up till around June 2013). Some of these precede the Killing the Crazy story, but cover topics aside from paranoia, many are from the months shortly following that story (which occurred late 2012 or early 2013). The main point here is that as my anxiety levels began to diminish, I was able to ‘work the program’ and consider a broader array of topics through the lenses of…

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